Joel

III

As the evening progressed, we traded our glasses of water for tall tin cans of cheap spiked seltzers. We laid out lazily on his couch, my head settled on his chest as his hand dived deep underneath my sweats and cupped the flat ass my father accosted me with at birth. We engaged in playfully passionate debate as we sifted through the best Netflix had to offer.

"How do you not like The Strangers?" Joel questioned in disbelief.

"It's such a cop-out," I rebutted, "giving the killers no motive just seems lazy."

"That's what makes the movie so good. It could be the person you least expect without any real reason." He concluded the end of his argument with a playful bite just short of my face.

"It's pretentious as fuck," I reassured.

"And Jennifer's Body isn't?"

"Don't you dare! Jennifer's Body is a cinematic masterpiece. Megan Fox is the bisexual icon the world needs right now."

We reached common ground at a Nightmare on Elm Street, equal parts slasher gore and full frontal nudity.

As we laid there, I studied Joel's heartbeat. It was a smooth and steady pattern like the bassline in an R&B love song. He smelled great too, like the sample cards Macy's employees staffed at those fancy perfume counters attacked you with when you first walked in. It was a bit unnerving how unphased he was, calm and collected.

We started with a few tap kisses, the kind you would sneak behind the teacher's back in elementary school, and shortly graduated to the good stuff. Our mouths stretched over each other as flavors of vodka and black cherry married into one. His skin was as smooth as his lips, kind of how I would imagine a Fenty Skin ad would feel. The bridges of our noses grazed against one another, our hands grabbing at each other like ledges on a rock climbing course. 

It wasn't until Joel lifted himself up from his original position and pulled off his shirt from above his head that my heart began to race. His hands sunk into the leather beside my head. He bent his elbows in a push-up stance and lowered his face to mine.

"You're so beautiful," he whispered into my ear.

It took everything in me not to roll my eyes. It wasn't the first time someone had called me beautiful, which I mean in the most humblest of ways. But it was difficult to actually believe this sentiment, some days harder than others. Sometimes I would spend countless hours standing in front of the mirror. I would watch the divots in my rib cage deepen every time I inhaled or how my thin arms would swing besides myself.

I would study my face. My fingers would pick at the texture along the bags underneath my eyes and would follow its way to the blackheads that spotted my cheeks. They would trace the perimeters of my lips, thin and pink, and pulled at my ears that poked out of the sides of my head like paper plates.

"That's all you," I deflected with a sheepish smile.

"Stay right there."

I watched him grab his polaroid from underneath the television and return back to the couch. His thumb flicked rapidly against the camera's dial to situate the new film. With a squinted eye, he looked through the camera's viewfinder and aimed the lens at me. A beaming white flash compromised my sight without warning. My arm lifted in instinct and a flexed hand shielded my face.

"Move your hand," Joel teased as he continued to set off the camera's flash.

He lifted one leg over my body and targeted the camera at me from a bird's eye view. The hand that wasn't holding the camera caressed my cheek. He held the lobe of my ear in between his index finger and his thumb, massaging it gently. The flashes lit up in a pattern, giving me enough time to position my face in a way that seemed effortless.

His free hand slowly migrated past my jaw and to my neck. His fingers wrapped at the sides of my neck, his calluses rubbed roughly against my skin. Feeling his large hand around my throat made me want to melt into him.

I would let him do whatever he wanted to me.

The subtle squeeze of his hand intensified. His grip tightened with every flash of his camera. The palm of his hand slowly pressed down onto my trachea. I could feel the veins in my forehead begin to bulge out.

I posed for him through the growing pain. I had convinced myself that I was competing on an episode of America's Next Top Model and this was just a challenge to progress to the finale,  like that episode where they had spiders crawling across the model's faces or when they were thrown off a cliff and into the ocean.

Just as the blood began to rush at my cheeks, three heavy knocks boomed against the front door. Time froze and with a lifted hand, Joel and I stared into each other's faces in panic.